I'm at my wits end here, because every day I have to write up a crazy story about the Republican presidential nominee for the 2016 general election.
It's been quite taxing, I understand that, but it still part of my job. And I'll do it!
It goes something like this.
On Tuesday, the WSJ reported that the Obama administration secretly paid the Iranians $400 million dollars that suspiciously coincided with the release of four Americans being held in Tehran.
But the money was part of a not so secret deal that had been struck back in 1979.
- When the U.S. Embassy was taken over in 1979, the Carter Administration declined to deliver weapons the Shah had ordered and paid $400 million for.
- When the Iran deal was struck, it was agreed that the United States would refund the $400 million with interest accrued over the years, for a total of $1.7 billion.
- As a good-faith gesture, Iran released hostages at the same time the agreement went into effect.
Now comes the really crazy part of this story.
For some inexplicable reason, Donald Trump told his rallygoers on Wednesday, that he actually witnessed a video made by the Iranians showing this secret pay off.
Trump said, “I’ll never forget the scene this morning and remember this, Iran—I don’t think you’ve heard this anywhere but here—Iran provided all of that footage, the tape, of taking that money off that airplane, right? $400 million dollars in cash! This is in cash!”
That's a lot of cash.
He continued, "Over there, where that plane landed, top secret, they don’t have a lot of paparazzi, you know, the paparazzi doesn’t do so well over there. And they have a perfect tape, obviously done by a government camera, and the tape is of the people taking the money off the plane. That means that in order to embarrass us further, Iran sent us the tape. It’s a military tape. It’s a tape that was a perfect angle, nice and steady.”
That must be some tape, right? Well, it's not. It a lie! A complete lie. I saw this unfold on twitter last night.
If you missed the whole tweetstorm on Trump's "top secret" tape references that weren't top secret - here it is: pic.twitter.com/qVXmPjZEFm
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) August 4, 2016
I understand if he's running out of material to entertain his supporters with during his vaudevillian rallies, but to make up such an out and out lie is incomprehensible.
We know he's a serial exaggerator and is a liar, but this is just crazy.
U.S. national security officials are literally laughing at Donald Trump’s claim that hewatched a “top secret” Iranian military-produced video showing its government scurrying to grab pallets filled with hundreds of millions of dollars.
“It didn’t happen,” one U.S. official said. “That was not part of any briefing.”
The other just chuckled at the proposition.
When his campaign was asked to explain how Trump saw a secret Iranian tape of this huge amount of cash being delivered to embarrass us, they replied that it was really b-roll footage from Fox News.
Well, it turns out he saw it on TV. Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks admitted to TheWashington Post that footage Trump was referring to was not, in fact, top secret. It was b-roll from a Fox News segment.
Any other candidate in any type of election, no matter how far down ticket, would be finished if they made up a lie like that.
